Paradiso 33

In 1978 Salvador Dai painted “Gala’s Christ,” a stereoscopic work in two components. Over the four months that I have been reading the 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy a canto a day, I also have been doing stereoscopic vision therapy with a behavioral optometrist. Having been amblyopic since birth, I always had considered myself effectively blind in my right lazy eye. I learned, however, that it was not the eye but rather my brain that was lazy. Within the first behavioral optometry appointment, using some vision therapy tricks, my  doctor demonstrated to my amazement that I could see with my “blind” eye. Now, after over a year of weekly appointments and at-home work, my facial droop is barely discernible, I have complete peripheral vision, and I am working on central vision and on coordinated movement of both eyes. As a result of this work, I was able to see Avatar 3D. And that is the point of stereoscopic vision–to see simultaneously with depth from two points of view, to see true.

Little by little as my vision grew

it penetrated further through the aura

of the high lamp which in Itself is true.

What then I saw is more than tongue can say.

(XXXIII, 52-55)

O Light Eternal fixed in itself alone,

by Itself alone understood, which from Itself

loves and glows, self-knowing and self-known;

That second aureole which shone forth in Thee,

conceived as a reflection of the first–

or which appeared so to my scrutiny–

seemed in Itself of its own coloration

to be painted with man’s image. I fixed my eyes

on that alone in rapturous contemplation.

Like a geometer wholly dedicated

to squaring the circle, but who cannot find,

think as he may, the principle indicated–

so did I study the supernal face.

I yearned to know just how our image merges

into that circle, and how it there finds place; . . .

(XXXIII, 124-138)

In the light of faith, we labor and are given the grace to see true. We learn to see true first by gazing into the eyes of our mothers, and then we encounter the multiple others who serve that place in our lives that Beatrice served in Dante’s. We also yearn to see Christ in his real presence, whether in the rituals of our sacramental life or with the inner eye of contemplation. And as our souls learn to see the depth and truth of things with the eyes of Christ here below, so above we one day will see Truth with the eyes of Christ.

The idea for this blog started with the Inferno paintings of Soloni Robertson posted on the University of Texas at Austin Dante Worlds website. Reading The Purgatorio, I then discovered Salvador Dali’s Divine Comedy woodcuts, which often had an uncanny sensibility for the seven primary chakras, each of which according to Carolyn Myss in Anatomy of the Spirit “contains a universal spiritual life-lesson that we must learn as evolve into higher consciousness” (68). Numerous other artists also came into play.

Reading The Paradiso, I then encountered the masterworks of Dali’s Christian corpus, done later in his artistic career. I also encountered Dali’s stormy relationship with Gala–his Beatrice and his stolen wife. The cantos and the art reawakened interest and insight in the Jungian archetypes of the male developmental journey.

The art helped me to sustain interest in the poetry, and this stereoscopic encounter has awakened my consciousness as much as any extended retreat–all the more so for having been done over the Lenten and Easter seasons.

Looking forward, I can imagine two more projects in play. The first could be a paper for the Academy of Homiletics on the coming theme of “the call to preach,” using insights gleaned from Dante and Dali. The second might be to re-appropriate my study of the evolution of the stages of human consciousness as posed by Ken Wilbur in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, bringing these into conversation with Dante.

Looking back, a handful of the artists’ images have spoken most powerfully to me, and I have presented them once again here.

Paradiso 32

Look now on her who most resembles Christ,

for only the great glory of her shining

can purify your eyes to look on Christ. (XXXII, 85-87)

. . . just so must we move on, turning our eyes

to the Primal Love, that as your powers advance

with looking toward Him, you may penetrate

as deep as may be through His radiance. (XXXII, 141-144)

Paradiso 31

Then in the form of a white rose, the host

of the sacred soldiery appeared to me,

all those whom Christ in his own blood espoused.

(XXXI, 1-3)

Ayurvedic philosophy speaks of a transpersonal Eighth Chakra of the Soul. From our creation in the image and likeness of God, and by virtue of being in Christ, we too are in the sacred soldiery which Dante now contemplates.

Paradiso 30

If all that I have said of her below

were gathered now into a single paean,

that would be scant praise of her beauty now.

The beauty I saw there transcends all measure

of mortal minds. I think only her Maker

can wholly comprehend so great a treasure.

Here I concede defeat. No poet known,

comic or tragic, challenged by his theme

to show his power, was ever more outdone.

As feeblest eyes, struck by the sun, go blind,

so the remembrance of my lady’s smile

strikes every recognition from my mind.

(XXX, 16-27)

American painter Mary Cassatt understood the prolonged conversation of eye contact between mother and child. What was the pool into which Dante looked as he gazed in prolonged conversation into the eyes of Beatrice? Or Dali, gazing into the eyes of Gali?

“The flame of high desire that makes you yearn

for greater knowledge of these things you see

pleases me the more I see it burn.

But only this same water satisfies. You must bend down and drink.”

–So spoke the pole-star of my eyes.

. . .

No babe in arms that ever wakened hungry

from having slept too long could turn its face

to its dear mother’s milk more eagerly

than I bent down to drink in Paradise

of the sweet stream that flows its grace to us,

so to make better mirrors of our eyes.

. . .

And as a slope shines in the looking glass

of a lake below it, as if to see itself

in its time of brightest flower and greenest grass;

so, tier on tier, mounting within that light,

there glowed, reflected in more than a thousand circles,

all those who had won return to Heaven’s height.

And if so vast a nimbus can be bound

within its lowest tier, what then must be

the measure of this rose at its topmost round? . . .

Into the gold of that rose that blooms eternal,

rank on rank, in incenses of praise

it sends up to the Sun forever vernal– . . .

(XXX, 70-7-75, 82-87,109-126)

The beatific point mathematically implicit in the Mystic Rose is that Each is jointly in relation not only to the Center but to Each.

Parker J. Palmer, in a section on “Truth Revisited” in The Courage to Teach (99-106), envisions teaching and learning as a Community of Truth, which each Knower relating to each Knower, around and in relation to a central Subject. Dante’s Mystic Rose invites us to this Wisdom Community.

Paradiso 29

Each man, to show off, strains at some absurd

invented truth; and it is these the preachers

make sermons of; and the Gospel is not heard.

. . .

Christ did not say to his first congregation:

‘Go and preach twaddle to the waiting world.’

He gave them, rather, holy truth’s one foundation.

That, and that only, was the truth revealed

by those who fought and died to plant the faith.

They made the Gospel both their sword and shield.

Now preachers make the congregation roar

with quips and quirks, and so it laugh enough,

their hoods swell, and they ask for nothing more.

But in their tippets there nests such a bird

that the people, could they see it, would soon know

what faith to place in pardons thus conferred.

(XXIX, 94-96, 109-120)

From a May 11, 2009 blog entry on The Dali-ization of the Gospel and Bible:

“Take a moment and reflect on Salvador Dali’s . . . depiction of the watches. What strikes you? For me (and I am no art critic), I am taken by the limpness of the watch cases. Something that I know is supposed to be sturdy and house intricate mechanisms that mark time aren’t really limp like deflated balloons.

“The way Dali depicts watches is how USAmerican evangelism depicts the gospel of Jesus Christ. What the Bible, and the Gospels in particular, depict as a sturdy, captivating reality, the USAmerican Church has made as appealing as a banana peel. A revelation in Jesus Christ of dynamic energies driving the missional story of God’s redemptive actions can’t get most Christians off their couches. Why? Oh, I know that many Christians go to church and some do some ‘convenient-to-their-schedules’ servant-like stuff, but overall a majority in the USAmerican church limps along waiting for Jesus to come back so they won’t be ‘left behind.’

“Just imagine USAmerican Bibles. . . . I’d love to see a skilled artist paint Bibles the way Dali painted the watches. Bibles might be best sellers, but they aren’t read much. They lie limp on the bedroom dresser or backseat of the car waiting until next Sunday. What is sturdy reading for USAmerican Christians? . . . The Bible is the wholesome meal; all other writers are mere vitamins, even N.T. Wright and Scot McKnight. And these two men would agree.”

Paradiso 28

Carolyn Myss in her Anatomy of the Spirit discusses the ten sefirot of the Tree of Life of the Jewish Kabbalah–in which she sees a comparable typology to that of the sacraments and the chakras, as discussed early in this blog. In this typology, Keter or Kether (in Hebrew, “crown”) is the topmost sefirah and  is in Myss’ description “the supreme crown of God, representing the part of the Divine that inspires physical manifestation. This sefirah is the most undefined, therefore the most inclusive. There is no identity, no specificity in this point of beginning between heaven and earth” (74). For Myss, this sefirah is akin to the seventh Crown Chakra. Jewish representation also calls Kether the Primum Mobile.

Here in the ninth sphere of the Primum Mobile of The Paradiso, Dante and Beatrice see the angels in their spheres arrayed around that single single point of Divine light which manifests creation and which manifests energetically to us in our ordered creation as a crown, a chakra, a rose.

. . . and turning felt my senses reel

as my own were struck by what shines in heaven

when we look closely at its turning wheel.

I saw a Point that radiated light

of  such intensity that the eye it strikes

must close or ever after lose its sight.

(XXVII, 13-18)

Paradiso 27

Paradiso 26

. . . for she who guides you through this holy land

has, in a single turning of her eyes,

the power that lay in Ananias’ hand.

“As she wills, late or soon, let remedy

come to my eyes,” I said, “the gates through which

she brought the fire that ever burns in me.

The Good the is this cloister’s happiness

is the Alpha and Omega of the scripture

love reads to me with light and heavy stress.”

(XXVI, 10-18)

. . . so from my eyes, my lady’s eyes, whose ray

was visible from a thousand miles and more,

drove every last impediment away;

in consequence of which I found my sight

was clearer than before, and half astonished,

I questioned her about a fourth great light

near us, and she: “In that ray’s Paradise

The first soul from the hand of the First Power

turns ever to its maker its glad eyes.”

(XXVI, 76-84)

“O first and only fruit earth ever saw

spring forth full ripe; O primal sire, to whom

all brides are equally daughters and daughters-in-law . . .

(XXVI, 91-93)

In Canto 26, Beatrice is the mage who heals and opens Dante’s eyes.

InDali’s “Discovery of America,” Dali’s Beatrice–Gala–is the banner and perhaps even the mast of the ship of discovery, and the entire painting is laced with Christly imagery.

I am reading Canto 26 on the Feast of St Catherine of Siena, lay Dominican doctor of the Church. My favorite image of Catherine is her statue near the Vatican. I most often have thought of it as a soldierly image, but Catherine too is a mage and a contemplative–a Beatrice to the papacy and to the Church. Robert Lenz’s icon shows Catherine carrying the boat of the Church on her shoulder.

On the Great Lakes, maidens adorned the prows of ships. In China, dragons are used. And so it is, Beatrice in her many forms and personages expresses a Jungian archetype of militancy, vision, love, and sovereign integration.

In this canto, Adam–the Earth Creature before separation into male and female–is the first fruit of creation, made in the image and likeness of God. For men, Beatrice beacons original blessing, even as her many incarnations she mirrors to men (as a screen lady) their original sin as they labor to put their souls together again.

Paradiso 25

If ever it comes to pass that the sacred song,

to which both heaven and earth to set their hand

that I grew lean with laboring years long,

wins over the cruelty that exiles me

from the sweet sheepfold where I slept, a lamb,

and to the raiding wolves an enemy;

with a changed voice and with my fleece full grown

I shall return to my baptismal font

a poet, and there assume the laurel crown. . . .

(XXV, 1-9)

And Beatrice said, smiling her blessedness:

“Illustrious being in whose chronicle

is written our celestial court’s largesse,

let hope, I pray, be sounded at this height.

How often you personified that grace

when Jesus gave His chosen three more light!”

(XXV, 28-33)

“Lift up your head, look up and do not fear,

for all that rises from the moral world

must ripen in our rays from sphere to sphere.”

(XXV, 34-36)

A friend, while a young man and under the influence of addicting substances, did brutal violence to his girlfriend and is now serving sentence in a maximum security prison. After years of coming to terms with addictive and criminal mind through the practice in prison of his Christian faith, he and his faith community have taken leadership in ministering to the sick and the dying of the prison. He is now a person of true love, true hope, and exemplary integration.

This is one man’s story of the Jungian archetypal journey from soldier (as manifested in this case in domestic violence), mage (in the healing ministry of the prison), to lover (experienced contemplatively through the practice of faith), and sovereign (the hope that comes from authentic integration).

Dali’s “Virgin of Guadalupe” reminds me of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Mexico and then to St Louis in January 1999–and his intervention here on behalf of a Missouri inmate sentenced to capital punishment. I think one of the deepest sufferings for men as they seek and attain integration in mid and later life is coming to terms with the women (and men, and children) whom they may have hurt along the way. This journey to healing and forgiveness is essential to the spiritual attainment of hope and joy. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Paradiso 24

So spoke Beatrice. . . .

(XXIV, 10)

“Oh sacred sister whose prayer is so devout,

the ardor of your love enters my bliss

within that lovely sphere and calls me out.”

(XXIV, 28-30)

Throughout his meditation on The Paradiso, Sandro Botticelli executed repeated paintings of Dante and Beatrice, standing in various but similar poses and all circumscribed by a simple circle. Here above is one of a number of such images in the eighth sphere of the fixed stars. (See also Paradiso 10.)

This repeated rendering of the more-or-less same image gives indication of something archetypal going on in Botticelli’s (or Dante’s or Dali’s) psyche. It is said that the model for the women of several of Botticelli’s paintings, including his “The Birth of Venus” below was Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci, “la bella Simonetta” (ca. 1453 – 1476). Renowned for her beauty and also portrayed in the works of other painters (in one case, portrayed by Piero to the right as Cleopatra), she was married to Marco Vespucci of Florence and was the alleged mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici. Botticelli himself never married; however, his grave lies at the feet of that of Simonetta Vespucci.